Comparison between Perceived Leadership Style of Head teachers and Their Practices

Abstract

A person who influences other people to achieve the specific objectives of an organization is a
leader. While leadership is a process in which a leader influences socially to achieve the
organizational goals and asks for subordinates to participate voluntarily for the purpose. The most
accepted and commonly used leadership styles in secondary schools autocratic, democratic, and
laissez-faire. It is proved that the democratic style of leadership is very useful to make the
organization successful. But some of the cases are observed that headteachers use autocratic
style to run an institute. They perceive that they follow the democratic style but on the other
hand, their practices showed a different picture. This situation demands to be investigated that
whether their perceived style matches their practices. This study is conducted to achieve the
objectives i.e., to find out secondary school teachers and headteachers’ perceptions about heads’
leadership style and the difference between headteachers’ perceived style and their practices.
A survey method was used to conduct this descriptive type of study. All secondary schools of city
Gujrat were the population while forty secondary schools were randomly selected from these
schools as a sample of the study. All headteachers and 3 teachers from each selected school were
part of the sample. The total sample consisted of 40 heads and 120 teachers. Two questionnaires
were constructed to collect the data from headteachers and teachers. Respondents were asked
to rate their responses on five points Likert scale. Questionnaires were validated through expert
opinion. CVI of both the questionnaires was .83. Cronbach Alpha of the instrument for
headteachers was .70 and .77 of the instrument for teachers. It was concluded that the
democratic style of leadership was perceived by the headteachers. The perception of teachers
about their heads’ leadership style was the same. There was a significant difference between the
perceptions of headteachers and teachers regarding the autocratic leadership style of
headteachers.